Syria Tests Limits of Iran President’s Overture to West Syria is proving a testing ground for Iranian President Hassan Rohani’s new foreign policy and his battle to assert dominance over the country’s hardliners. Rohani, who came to power last month, has so far shunned the bellicose rhetoric of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as the U.S. prepares for strikes on the country’s Syrian ally. By contrast, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said last week that U.S. is flirting with its “most historic defeat” and that intervention would be more dangerous than in Vietnam and could ultimately lead to Israel’s disappearance. Rohani has promised a more constructive engagement with Western powers as sanctions linked to Iran’s disputed nuclear program cripple the economy of world’s sixth-largest oil producer. His challenge now is to ensure that any U.S. strike on Syria doesn’t upend that policy by giving hardliners an excuse to ratchet up their anti-U.S. rhetoric or place obstacles on the path to a resumption of nuclear talks, which stalled in April. Iran’s president is “really compelled to either take on the hardliners or to see everything that he was elected to do go up in flames,” Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington said in a phone interview. Rohani was elected to “resolve the nuclear issue in a way that works to Iran’s advantage and with this kind of mandate it’s clear that Syria would be a major deterrent to any resolution.” bloomberg/news/2013-09-04/syria-tests-limits-of-iran-president-s-overture-to-west.html?alcmpid=markets
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 06:01:06 +0000
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